Why Galaxy Quest is the Greatest Star Trek Movie Ever

By Adam GottfriedPlease note that I do not own the rights to the Galaxy Quest logo and I borrowed the image from FanArt.tv

Yeah, I can imagine what you’re thinking. Some of you just stopped reading at the title because a) you totally agree with me and feel no pressing need to be convinced, b) my words are blasphemous and to read them is to spit in the face of all that is good and righteous and pure in the universe. But this article isn’t for them, my friends. This article is for you.

For those of you who do not know, Galaxy Quest was a movie that came out in late 1999, starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell and a young Justin Long (it was, in fact, his first movie). It was intended to be a spoof of the older Star Trek Movies (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) and the emergent Star Trek: The Next Generation movies, of which three of the four were out. (Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, followed by the last of the TNG feature films, Nemesis in 2002. Bear in mind, I don’t know this crap off the top of my head, IMDB is my friend.)

Honestly, the IMDB elevator pitch for the movie describes it reasonably well without spoiling anything: “The alumni cast of a cult space TV show have to play their roles as the real thing when an alien race needs their help.”

So where do I get off making the claim that Galaxy Quest is the greatest Star Trek movie ever? Well, let me tell you.

I grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with my dad, who watched Star Trek: The Original Series with his dad. As a kid watching the show, I used to dream about what it would be like to be on board a starship, and wish on every ball of burning gas, billions of miles away that Captain Picard would order the Enterprise NCC-1701-D (now that I did know off the top of my head) back to the 20th century (which it still was at that point) and pick me up for an adventure. Apparently I wasn’t alone in that, because some dude wrote a story and a screenplay about it! (That dude was David Howard, FYI.)

So some of my declaration is based on some elements of nostalgia, but it is far more than that. The movie has all the elements of a great Star Trek episode: Humor, drama, action, character growth, a beginning, middle and an end. And, because the movie was an original story with non-established characters based loosely on existing personalities, there was no previous canon for it to live up to, and no angry nerds to nitpick any discontinuity with said nonexistent canon.

In the end, Galaxy Quest is much more like an homage to Star Trek than a spoof of that intellectual property, but unlike most Star Trek movies, it came with all the great moments and without any disappointments.

THAT is why Galaxy Quest is the greatest Star Trek movie ever. Also? Sky High is the greatest superhero movie ever.